Electronic office equipment networks are a complex interconnection of processing terminals or work stations of varying capabilities performing an assortment of data processing and text processing operations and printers of various types including letter quality, dot matrix and the like and equipped with differing options such as paper feeding hardware. Such networks typically include a Printer Resource Manager (PRM) which receives requests from the work stations in the network for either a particular type of printer or for any available printer. When the requested printer becomes available, the PRM will notify the requesting work station which then claims the printer. The work station then needs to determine the hardware options that are attached to the printer in order to set up appropriate indicators. The work station can then output the correct data stream through the network to the claimed printer, i.e. ASCII data to an ASCII type printer and EBCDIC data to an EBCDIC type printer.
A printer will have various options which must be identified in order for the work station to output the proper data stream. For example, a printer may have hardware attachments that permit the feeding of continuous fan-fold paper or the feeding of cut paper, and if equipped to feed cut paper, the feed may be either manual or automatic. The user at the work station is given three choices: (a) Continuous Paper; (b) Cut Paper, Manual Feed; or (c) Cut Paper, Automatic Feed. If the selected option calls for a hardware attachment which is not present when printing is attempted, a Hardware Mismatch is flagged to the user. There are many times when the user merely wants a hard copy of the data stream and does not care either what type of printer or which options may be attached to produce the hard copy. In this case, it would be desirable to provide the user at the work station with what amounts to a "don't care" choice in specifying printer options.